Wheely? It's a Dune Buggy!

This is a new one on me, the Wheelies Dune Buggy by Remco. It's a neat looking design. Anyone had one of these?

Man O' Man: The Manta Ray

 I'm in love again.

This time with the Studebaker Manta Ray from 1951.

God, what a car!

The Batmobile for the home, only two hundred plus were made. I adore that turbine and the three rear fins!  

Is the Manta Ray one for you? Is there a toy or model?

SAGAN CITY

 I love this bit of art I saw online awhile back. It signed Wright and entitled Sagan City but I cant find it online now. Those MV-5 vehicles are so damn cool.

Do you like it?

Robby's Laws of Robotics

I found these robots.

The Masudaya one is static and about 4" high.

The clockwork KO one is about a foot high. He sometimes hangs out with his Palitoy Cyberman friend discussing the merits of Isaac Asimov's laws of robotics.

Terranova47

USA

Lunar Orbiter: What Goes Round

The Lunar Orbiter may seem like an odd choice of model for a toy line. The Triang Spacex line had previously concentrated on spacecraft and vehicles which veered more towards science fiction, than science fact, but the advent of the second series included actual models based on real life vehicles such as the Apollo spacecraft, Soyuz, the ATS and the Orbiter. Whether this was a decision based on marketing and an attempt to cash in on some of the most recognizable machines in modern history, or just an economy of choice and simplicity, it may never be known. Either way, tucked in amongst Booster Rockets, Rocket Transporters, Crash Tenders and Salvage Craft, was a neat little model of one of the most underrated space probes of all time.

As NASA was keen to pave the way for a manned landing, given President Kennedy's response to the space race with the soviets, the original three stage plan for lunar exploration using the Ranger, Surveyor and Prospector probes, was curtailed. NASA needed to understand what the lunar surface was like and how feasible it might be to make a secure landing. The original idea to place unmanned roving vehicles to scout out proposed sites was deemed to costly and impractical, so the decision was made to use tried and trusted techniques and take high resolution photographs from low orbit.

 Between 1966 and 67, five unmanned probes were sent to the moon, initially to scout potential landing sites for Apollo with the final two probes mapping the lunar farside from a polar orbit, covering 99% of the moons surface. The probe was designed by Boeing with the imaging system provided by Eastman Kodak. The dual cameras photographed the surface onto film, which was then scanned digitally and transmitted to Earth for retrieval.

Boeing Engineering Mockup

Lunar Orbiter diagram from Kenneth Gatland's 'Robot Explorers'

Whilst the Soviet Luna 3 probe had recorded the first image of the lunar farside, the images were grainy and indistinct, whereas the Lunar Orbiter series managed to capture the moon as it was bathed in sunlight, enabling NASA engineers to prepare a useable map of the far side.

LUNA 3 Farside Photograph

The data was transmitted to Earth and the information was recorded on magnetic tape and film as a back up. Some of the more prominent information was then used to create large format mosaic images, which would be used as the basic of both publicity and reference material. 

However, the bulk of the images were never processed and remained stored on tape. These were archived for the next 20 years, until in 1986 they were released back to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for a decision as to whether to curate or discard the old tapes. As the means needed to read the tapes had become long obsolete, recovering the information was impractical. 

Rather than lose the huge amount of scientifically invaluable data, a small team of dedicated technicians made the decision to attempt to recover the images and with some limited funding from NASA, four old AMPEX FR-900 tape drives were procured and set up in the garage of one of the technicians. The 1500 tapes could be read and accessed, but in order to render images from the data, special software was needed, which no longer existed, so the tapes and drives were put back into storage once more until a solution could be found. 

In 2004, they were rediscovered and momentum gathered to restart the project. As a result, the team was moved into an old McDonalds restaurant on the JPL base, nicknamed 'McMoons' and the labour intensive project got under way.

Original quality 1966 compared to modern rendering

Re-interpreting the original data from the tapes resulted in an amazingly detailed and high quality image, compared to the original quality received in 1966. When the project eventually drew to a close in 2014 with the project fully completed, all the materials and drives were given over to NASA national archives. The stunning images and the background to the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP) can be seen here:

https://moonviews.com/

https://www.nasa.gov/topics/moonmars/features/LOIRP/loirp-gallery-index.html

MYSTERY FREEBIES

Hi. Found these the other day. They’re small aircraft kits. They may be cereal free gifts..... but who’s and what vintage I’ve no idea. Can anybody identify them? 

Will O.

UK

Prospector: Digging Deeper

 Collectors of Sword and Spacex toys will be familiar with the unusual Prospector model, with its distinctive balloon tyres and circular shape. As I have long been interested in the real plans for exploring space and have been looking at vintage space books and information from the sixties space race, I have seen that the origin of the Prospector toy began many years before it appeared on the shelves.

All of the toy and model versions, Project Sword, Spacex and Apollo Moon Exploring; follow the same general shape - a circular body, with large tyres and fore and aft outriggers for stability.

It was only recently that I realised the Prospector was part of a larger grand plan for lunar exploration and would have been the third stage in the programme to map the surface of the moon, prior to the actual landings in the late sixties. The Ranger project was the first step, sending an orbiting probe to map the surface and then crash landing and small capsule on the surface.

Given the success of Ranger, the second stage of the programme was initiated, with Surveyor, a soft landing probe with provision to take lunar samples. Once more, Surveyor proved very successful and there were additional plans for a Surveyor II, which would have carried a small electric rover. 

The next step in the programme would have brought about the Prospector missions, which would soft land a large roving vehicle with a planned range of approximately 50 miles and a duration of several weeks. The Army Ballistic Missile Agency proposed a design for the rover, which was based around a single axle with massive balloon tyres - as current thinking suggested that the moon may have large seas of dust and possibly crevasses, as well as irregular terrain. The Saturn rocket would have been the proposed launch vehicle, and the rover would have an electrically powered turbomotor, gathering energy from an overhead solar panel.

The boxy, Heath Robinson like affair found favour and once NASA was convinced to come on board, the design was developed into the circular vehicle, we are more familiar with.

The NASA archives show images of proposed models of various designs from the mid-sixties, based on this format and it is these and other publications such as Newsweek magazine, which would have been used as the basis of the toy.

Unfortunately for Prospector, the massively successful russian Luna programme was busily overtaking the American efforts to map the surface and Kennedy's decision to skip ahead slightly and go directly to a manned landing - possibly hastened by the soviet plans for a manned excursion - meant the Prospector probe was dropped, both for reasons of economy and practicality. The more achievable  Lunar Orbiter series would replace the Prospector programme, successfully photographing the lunar surface from orbit and helping to select a suitable landing site for the Apollo mission some two years later.

Fittingly, the Spacex series also carried a Lunar Orbiter toy in the second wave, as well as the quirky Prospector vehicle.

TUESDAY'S CHOICES

We had a ball in the local Charities this half-term Tuesday. We got in some new toys for the Grandkids' visit tomorrow and I picked up some odds n' sods too.

The best find was a Speed Kings Tractor and Trailer in near mint condition for the princely sum of one pound!

Joining it were two 12" Dr. Who monster dolls, a Galaxy Warrior called Dragoon, a Pokemon, some matchbox cars, which I've already cleaned up, an Action Man flying thingy [not sure what it is yet], a Transformer and coupla other inexpensive bits.

What do you think? Anything you would have bought readers?

There were quite a few interesting things I didn't get. After consulting Commander Bill, I passed up on these two Starcom toys from 1988. A bit steep for me at £22.

This Puckoon paperback brought back memories of long-gone Christmases, when my older Brothers got books like this.

Further vintage memories when I saw this goldy coppery metal picture! Like something from Stargate, would you hang it on your wall now?

These old knife sharpeners wopuld have been snapped up by my 13 yeard-old self, as they're dead ringers for Kung Fu Darn Gim or swords. I had a few back in the day, purely my own entertainment!

the latest Milkshake mag cover caught my eye en route. That's a nice space capsule!

A Womble was waiting for a home.

and crafts were in evidence in these old sets for Leather and Wood and Inca boot making! Now that's something I've never done.